The Cold War, National Security, and America in Space

Dr. Aaron Bateman is an Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and an affiliate of the Space Policy Institute. He received his Master’s in International Relations from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and his PhD in the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University. His research takes place at the intersection of science, technology, and national security during the Cold War. His research interests include technological cooperation and competition, military spaceflight, secrecy and knowledge regulation, arms control, technology and warfare, and the role of intelligence in statecraft. His work draws from archival collections in the United States, Western Europe, and the former Soviet Union. His first book project places Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the context of a more militarized American approach to space that had emerged in the 1970s, and shows how divergent views of space militarization influenced U.S. foreign relations and public diplomacy through the end of the Cold War. In other projects he explores the development of overseas American surveillance infrastructure and its impact on U.S. relations with host nations.

His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Diplomacy & Statecraft, Intelligence and National Security, the Oxford Handbook of Space Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Science & Diplomacy, Diplomacy and Statecraft, and the Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Since he believes that historians have a unique role to play in informing current policy debates, he also writes about contemporary defense and space topics in policy-focused publications including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Physics Today, and War on the Rocks.

While completing his doctoral studies, Dr. Bateman held a Guggenheim predoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Prior to graduate school, he served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with assignments at the National Security Agency and the Pentagon. As a staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, he supported intelligence and national security space efforts. He has also participated in international dialogues aimed at promoting stability in space.